Stanford comes with cheap blood test to detect TB

(Thinkstock Photos/ Getty Images)A blood test devised by Stanford University's researchers could emerge as the easiest and cheapest way to diagnose active tuberculosis, which kills 1.5 million people every year. They have identified a gene expression that distinguishes patients with active tuberculosis from those with either latent tuberculosis or other diseases, said a research paper published online in Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.

TB infects 9.6 million new patients across the world each year and kills 1.5 million. In India, two TB patients die every three minutes. "One-third of the world's population is currently infected with TB. Even if only 10 % of them get active TB, that's still 3 % of the world's population, 240 million people," a press release put out by Stanford University quoted the paper's author Purvesh Khatri as saying.

Traditionally, TB is diagnosed by spotting disease-causing bacterium in sputum samples coughed up by patients. But it's not possible for some patients, especially pediatric ones, to produce sputum on demand, said research associate Tim Sweeney. The sputum test is helpful for monitoring how patients respond to treatment.

"Moreover, as people start to get better, they can't produce sputum for the test. The new test developed in the Khatri lab works on an ordinary blood sample and removes the need to collect sputum. It can signal a TB infection even if the individual also has HIV. And it won't give a positive response if someone only has latent TB or has had a TB vaccine. It also doesn't matter which strain of TB has infected a person, or even if it has evolved resistance to antibiotic drugs. The test works in both adults and children,'' said the press release.

Subscribe ETHealthworld Newsletter

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao passed the order while acting on a PIL filed by Delhi-based dermatologist Zaheer Ahmed who complained that lakhs of medicines were being sold on the internet every day without much regulation, posing a huge risk to patients and doctors alike.